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Mapping the Chronology of Bhakti: Milestones, Stepping Stones, and Stumbling Stones. Proceedings of a Workshop Held in Honour of Paṇḍ̣it R. Varadadesikan

Author:

Edited by Valérie Gillet

Publisher:

Institut Français de Pondichéry / Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient

Year:2014

Pages:

381 p.

Series:

Collection Indologie n°124

Language:

English

ISBN:

978-81-8470-199-9

Price:

1100 Rs (48 €)

Remarks:---

About the book

Starting around the sixth century of the common era, a new form of fervent religiosity seems to be discernible in the Tamil-speaking South that is often termed the “Bhakti movement”. The eleven essays gathered in this volume all deal with South Indian primary sources related to the various phenomena that can be grouped together under the head of “Bhakti”, which may be broadly defined as personal devotion between a devotee and his god. What characterised the early phase of this “movement”, which in subsequent centuries swept across the whole sub-continent and transformed popular religion in every place that it reached, was the emphasis placed upon the emotional aspect of the relation between the devotee and his chosen deity: the Tamil hymns regularly underline the message that salvation can be attained just through such devotion.

The chronology of the appearance, growth and development of this transformative movement is riddled with uncertainties, whether we consider literary or archaeological evidence. Each of the contributions to this volume addresses some aspect of the history of this movement in the South, and so, drawing on a wide range of disciplines — linguistics, philology, epigraphy, archaeology — they together contribute, each in its own way, to the mapping of the chronology of Bhakti. This volume is dedicated to our esteemed colleague Paṇḍit R. Varadadesikan, a specialist of the Tamil sources of Vaiṣṇavism, who recently retired after dedicating forty-four years of his life to a career in the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO working to further understanding of Tamil and Maṇipravāḷam literature.

Valérie GILLET is a member of the École française d'Extrême-Orient. Her research focuses on material mostly found in the religious monuments excavated or built on the territories of the two main early medieval South Indian dynasties, the Pallavas and the Pāṇḍyas. She also attempts to map the emergence and the development of the cult of the deity called Subrahmaṇya/Murukaṉ in the medieval Tamil-speaking South. Since 2007, she has been posted at the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO, of which she became Head in 2011. She has published a study of the narrative iconography of the 8th century structural Pallava temples entitled La creation d'une iconographie śivaïte narrative: Incarnations du dieu dans les temples pallava construits, as well as several articles on material from the Pallava period and sacred places related to Subrahmaṇya/Murukaṉ.